Traditionally, a sports referee may use several tools to manage a sports match. For example, in a football (soccer) match, the tools may include a coin to toss deciding the team initially in possession of the ball, red and yellow cards to indicate penalties and warnings, and watches to keep track of the game time and the accumulation of injury time. During the football match the referee may also use a writing instrument and paper to record information such as yellow/red card warnings issued, scored goals by each team and time of score, the identity of a goal scorer, player substitutions, distances on the playing field, and other information. After the football match, the referee has generally manually compiled information about the match so it may be recorded in a report, for example, by national and/or international league officials and/or organizations. Such a compilation process may be time consuming, and may include inaccuracies as the referee attempts to reconstruct the events of the match after the fact.
In addition to the sports referees, many observers of sports matches, for example, journalists, broadcasters, and spectators, often independently record their own observations during a sports match, and then may afterward reconcile their observations with the official record. Sports fans may be eager to keep abreast of a match while it is in progress, without having to wait for a reporter to post his observations.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,122,559 to Bohn describes “a hand held soccer scoring computer for tracking and recording conditions and activities taking place in a soccer match includes a keypad for entering and a display for showing information evolving during the course of the event with regard to player, team, activity and activity location, and the game time associated with the entry. The recorded data may be contemporaneously reviewed and edited and upon completion of the soccer match transferred to a processor printing in desired statistical formats.”